Arches National Park

This morning we were the last people to leave the motel -- we didn't leave till nearly 10! We were trying to arrange lodging for the next two nights while we still had access to a telephone and some sort of wifi. I had to hang out in the lobby with the laptop since we couldn't get the wifi in the room. I was looking up motels in Moab and uploading pictures and text from the last five days, while Fernanda was in the room calling places. All the room finding services suck. The best help we had was a site listing a lot of the various motels in Moab, and us calling them one by one. We arranged a reservation for the next two nights at place that was cheap, and even claimed to have wifi in the rooms. Fernanda even went ahead and booked rooms for the Grand Canyon, our next stop, so we are set for the next 4 days. Of course, we haven't thought about what we will do for Labor Day, or where we will be... So anyway, lodging taken care of, pictures and text finally up on the web site, we left for Arches National Park, just down the road.

(Actually, first we drove up the road past it a bit to where I had taken a picture of the moon last night and lost the protective covering sock of the camera; I wandered around the side of the road trying to figure out where it was we stopped, and was rewarded by finding the sock! Yay!)

So, Arches: It was amazing. We spent the day in the park, driving down and stopping to walk around some of the various spectacular rock formations they have. The weather was fine, very strong sun (we seem to be doing a good job skirting the bad weather -- we just hit a little rain yesterday, where it seems it rained quite heavily in the park), puffy white clouds. We picnicked in the park for lunch, and spent a full day driving and hiking until we left around 5.

The last time I was in Arches was nearly 15 years ago (though it doesn't seem that long), and a couple times walking through the same areas my brain would suddenly dredge up thought patterns from that time, and I was suddenly remembering little details from that trip. Sean or Jill, if you're out there reading this, I want to thank you for taking me to Arches back then. In fact, I want to thank you for making me appreciate Utah in general. That was a great trip!

Today was finally a relaxed day. We finished up with site-seeing for the day around 5, and went to check into the motel. We weren't sure if it had a pool or not, but we were hoping! And we were rewarded! A pool, wifi, great rates, a fridge in the room. I cannot praise the Apache Motel strongly enough. If you ever go to Moab, stay here. It is off the main drag, and is old (John Wayne stayed here back in the day when they filmed Westerns out here), but is friendly, inexpensive, has a pool, has wifi, has character... We are completely thrilled.

We hung out at the pool for a while, then for dinner we went to the Moab Brew Pub, which was OK, not great. Lots of Germans eating there. And this certainly isn't the Utah I recall from my childhood: a restaurant serving beer, strong beer, that it brewed itself in the state. I recall great difficulty regarding any alcoholic beverage, and what you could get was strongly diluted.

Tomorrow we go to Canyon Lands National Park, the park on the other side of the road from Arches. Then we come back to relax by the pool at the lovely Apache Motel.